Leftist Opposition Party in Mexico Wins Two Governors' Races

Elections for governor in two states over the weekend, the nation's first major voting this year, demonstrate the continuing growth of a left-of-center party that has capitalized on dissension in the governing party.

The challenger, the Party of the Democratic Revolution, won the top post in Baja California Sur, which includes Los Cabos and other beach resorts that Americans visit. Its candidate, Leonel Cota Montano, trounced his opponent from the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, 55 to 36 percent.

Mr. Cota built his coalition with the help of disgruntled members of the governing party who had hoped to be the party's candidate or to help choose the candidate. They bolted to the Party of the Democratic Revolution when their views were disregarded.

The voting on Sunday was uneventful, with few irregularities reported. The PRI did not challenge Mr. Cota's victory.

Since July 1997, the Party of the Democratic Revolution has won three gubernatorial posts. In Zacatecas and Tlaxcala, the party also achieved statehouse victories last year by winning disaffected leaders from the governing party.

In addition, the political leader of the party, Cuauhtemoc Cardenas Solorzano, won the powerful office of Mayor of Mexico City, with official stature equal to a governor.

A few years ago the party, which criticizes market-oriented policies and favors a strong role for the state in the economy and politics, labored under the image of a scrappy opposition that was good at organizing street protests but not at governing.

In the election on Sunday in the troubled southwestern state of Guerrero, the two parties battled to a photo finish. According to official results, with 98 percent of the vote counted at midday today, the PRI candidate, Rene Juarez Cisneros, was leading, with 48 percent of the vote, ahead of Felix Salgado Macedonio of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, who had 46.

Although the governing party celebrated, the president of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, rejected the results as a ''Government-engineered fraud.'' He announced that his party would seek to overturn the results and seek a recount.

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Mr. Lopez Obrador accused Interior Minister Francisco Labastida Ochoa, a member of the governing party, of rigging the election. Opposition poll watchers in many precincts contended that stalwarts from the governing party had handed out food and bags of cement in exchange for votes.

''The PRI once again trafficked on the poverty of the voters by distributing presents in return for their votes,'' Mr. Lopez Obrador said.

In the early hours of the count, the opposition led by a substantial margin. That vanished in the final hours of the tally.

Officials of the Party of the Democratic Revolution said 17,000 votes had been annulled statewide because of alleged irregularities, enough to tip the count away from their party.

For decades Guerrero was dominated by the Figueroa family, the autocratic political dynasty. Ruben Figueroa Alcocer, who was elected Governor in 1993, was forced to resign in 1996 because of suspicions that he masterminded a cover-up of the killing by state police in 1995 of 22 farm workers who supported the opposition.

President Ernesto Zedillo has sent confusing signals to his party over his role in choosing candidates for the presidential election next year.

Correction: February 10, 1999, Wednesday A headline yesterday about two gubernatorial elections in Mexico misstated the outcome. As the article noted, the leftist opposition party, the Party of the Democratic Revolution, won one election -- in Baja California Sur state -- not two. In the other state, Guerrero, the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party won.